This invention relates to an ice maker and is particularly concerned with an ice maker of the type including a tray from which ice pieces are discharged by partially inverting and flexing the tray longitudinally to break the bond between the ice pieces and the tray walls.
In the past, various devices have been proposed or used for making, harvesting and storing ice pieces in domestic refrigerators on either an automatic or semiautomatic basis. Semiautomatic ice services of this type are shown and described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,163,025; 3,226,939; and 3,273,353 all of which are assigned to the same assignee as the present invention. In the ice services described in these patents, both the freezing tray and the ice storage receptacle are positioned within the freezer compartment of a refrigerator.
It is desirable to provide an ice maker which is simple, low cost and manually operable for effecting rotation of the flexible ice tray from its normal freezing position to a partially inverted position and twisting the ice tray to discharge the ice pieces and particularly such an ice maker wherein filling of the ice tray with water to be frozen to form the ice pieces is automatically provided without the need of removing the tray from the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.
By our invention, there is provided a flexible tray type ice maker that will accomplish the above desirable results and which is easy to utilize for its intended purpose.